


Friends by Default

by WingletBlackbird



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Meta Essay, Nonfiction, cross-posted from tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-06
Updated: 2019-02-06
Packaged: 2019-10-23 03:56:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17676005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WingletBlackbird/pseuds/WingletBlackbird
Summary: A look at the nature and circumstances of Katniss's friendship with Gale, how it worked, and why it fell apart.





	Friends by Default

I’ve recently fallen back into the Hunger Games fandom, and I’ve been thinking about Katniss’s friendships. Not including Peeta, we know of only two people Katniss ever considered to be her friends before Thirteen: Madge and Gale. I wonder at this. Katniss is not an unkind individual; in fact she is very loving, if introverted. It is only the trauma that occurred when her father died which caused her to fear affection and prompted her to become so guarded. Why then didn’t she have more friends other than Madge and Gale? Indeed, she and Gale only met after her father died, and she and Madge only really began to deepen their relationship after the 74th Games. Did she have no other friends before the mining accident? Why ever not? Surely she should have had at least one close friend to count on? All the children grew up together, and there’s no way they could move away. They’re all stuck in the same small district. The only conclusion is that she had no other friends. No support. Nothing. 

The only reason I can figure on Katniss not having any friends growing up, (besides jealousy of her self-confidence and independence as demonstrated by her hand which “shot right up” in music assembly), is because of the class/racial divide. Katniss’s mother is from Town, and is white, and her father, from the Seam, was “olive-skinned.” Katniss, as the product of such a union, must not be popular in Town  _or_  in the Seam. This may be another reason why after her father dies no one helps. I’m certain most people didn’t have a lot to give, and had learned to be indifferent and hard-hearted. Times were difficult after all, but to offer no support whatsoever? It sounds to me that people wanted nothing to do with the Everdeens, unless they needed a healer. Katniss truly had no one when her father died. She and Madge sat together because Madge was an outcast, (or was sucked up to), due to her position as the mayor’s daughter, and Katniss was the product of a union that in most people’s minds shouldn’t have existed. She was utterly alone.

This lends some interesting insight into Katniss’s friendship with Gale. We know that it took her  _years_  to trust him. We know she was suspicious of him, and he didn’t like her very much. They stuck together out of convenience, and reassurance. It was an alliance for survival and mutual security. Eventually though, Katniss would come to claim, at least early in the series, that Gale was the “only person she could be herself around”. She says he’s her best-friend. I find this interesting.  He’s her best-friend, but do they spend time together outside the woods, and maybe some family get-togethers (which no doubt involved pooling resources)? There’s no evidence of it. We know he doesn’t eat lunch with her; Madge does that. They don’t seem to have hung out together the way best-friends do, unless they were trading or in the woods. That doesn’t sound like a best-friendship to me. In other words, it sounds like Gale is Katniss’s best-friend  _by default_. He is the  _only_  individual outside family, she would consider herself close to. In fact, I would say Katniss would call Gale her best-friend, but I don’t believe that Gale would have considered Katniss  _his_  best-friend. After all, Katniss asks him in Mockingjay if he’d ever kissed someone who was drunk before, and Gale gives her a very concise overview of his romantic history–all of which Katniss was utterly unaware of. How close were they if she didn’t even know these sorts of things about his life? I dare say Gale talked to his other friends about such things, not Katniss. Likewise, while Katniss claims that Gale is the only individual she can truly be herself around, she still keeps a lot of herself concealed from Gale. Thus, what I believe Katniss must mean by the statement is that she can share the burdens of supporting her family under Capitol rule with him. She can trust him to help her with that, to understand that. These are vulnerabilities to Katniss, and she cannot reveal them to anyone else. She only had Gale to trust with them,and she is guaranteed he’ll relate so she tells him. She doesn’t have to feel she shoulders it all alone. Over the years of their partnership she was  _finally_  granted a bit of breathing room, someone,  _anyone_  she can rely on, and she clings to it desperately. She values it, but it is a lopsided relationship emotionally and based on superficial commonalities. Gale is all Katniss has; Katniss is not all Gale has. 

It is later suggested that a part of the breakdown of her relationship with Gale is because he doesn’t know what it is like to be in the Games, but Peeta can. While it is undeniable that being through something like that with Peeta gave them a sympathetic understanding, that’s not why Gale and Katniss didn’t work anymore. Katniss and Gale were an alliance. After the Games, the alliance was unnecessary. The means of survival were different. The dangers were altered. A huge portion of what bound them together was gone, because they were not together for-each-other-just-as-people, but rather were together as too-young hunting partners. A truly deep friendship would survive the Games, the unrequited romantic interest etc. The reason it doesn’t survive because it’s foundation was shaky. Without the same burdens in common what else was there? Gale saw Katniss as a partner in literal crime, and then a romantic interest. If there is no need to hunt together, and she isn’t interested in him, he has no real reason to stick around. They don’t actually have all that much in common beyond enjoying the woods, hating the Capitol, and being forced to become bread-winners. However, because Katniss saw Gale as her only significant emotional support by default she is forced to bend over backwards. Sadly, this inequality means  Katniss suggests to Gale that maybe they had a chance if they ran into the woods, because otherwise he wouldn’t go, and she couldn’t bear to lose him. It means she has to always hedge about Peeta, and hide things from Gale, and not be able to depend on him anymore, or receive much, if any, support from him, because if she does lean on him for things he doesn’t like, he’ll leave. Katniss doesn’t want to be alone. Moreover, she fears losing people. The problem isn’t the Games. It’s that they no longer have something the other person needs, snares in exchange for archery lessons, and alliances are based on need. Now all that’s really left that they need or want from each other is that Katniss needs Gale for emotional support, and Gale wants her romantically. Give and take. Katniss knows this is how they work instinctively, and so to keep her only source of emotional support, her only “friend,” she dangles the hope of romance in front of him. It’s tragic.

Hence, when Katniss asks that Gale be by her side when she becomes the Mockingjay because she doesn’t feel up to it without him, she’s falling on old habits, turning to him as her only support. They have the Rebellion in common now. Surely he’ll  help her get through this now she’s the Monckinjay like he wanted. However, he ends up providing little emotional support to her, and pressures her with unwanted advances she tolerates rather than lose someone else. The MVP award for support goes to Finnick. Katniss was reaching for her old support and is finding it doesn’t exist. Is it not sad that Katniss had a friend who was really her friend because he was all she had? Likely due to racial prejudice? That she was so alone she clung to it with all her might? Is it not sad that she would be forced to suggest a romantic interest in a man who despises all the Merchants even though her own mother was/is one? After all, there was no one else, precisely because her mother was from Town. Gale’s  the best she’s got. She may as well put up with the comments since she understands the mindset. It’s unfair. At least, he tries to acknowledge that his prejudice helps the Capitol which is more than most manage to do.

Ultimately, Katniss and Gale’s relationship actually isn’t all that great, or at least isn’t all that strong, despite how it seems at the beginning. It is rooted in necessity, later in unmet expectations by Gale, and finally in the fear of abandonment as Katniss’s only, and therefore best, friend. It’s not good at all. It’s tragic on Katniss’s part. When Katniss cannot even find emotional support in him, they no longer have survival to bind them, and Gale knows he can’t have her, they fall apart. While they may care about each other, ultimately this is a relationship based upon the need for physical and emotional survival. It was an exchange, an alliance that included affection. It could never have lasted. They had precious little besides circumstances and a love for the woods in common. The best that could be hoped for is that they remain good and happy hunting partners. The cruel truth is that ultimately, and heart-breakingly, through no fault of her own, no one, besides possibly Madge, wanted to be Katniss’s friend.  _Not even Gale._


End file.
